At a time when hours of incredible documentary vision of the natural world are just a click away it's easy to become jaded with nature photography. The winners of this year's BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition will surely snap you out of that complacency with a truly jaw-dropping selection of images, including the profoundly moving snap above of an orphaned gorilla with its human caretaker.
Presented by the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the BigPicture competition is only in its sixth year, but has quickly become one of the most impressive nature photography competitions in an increasingly crowded photo-contest community. The competition features six main categories covering standard wildlife and landscape topics, plus there is an additional Photo Story category asking for five to eight images that tell a story. This year the story theme was Pushing the Limits.
The overall Grand Prize in the 2019 contest went to Audun Rikardsen for a magnificently timed shot of a black grouse performing an exuberant display in front of a gorgeous Norwegian landscape (above). Wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas, Chair of this year's jury, called the image a stunning combination of technical skill and creative brilliance.
"Here, the photographer has managed to capture the grouse's breeding display in a way that transports the viewer to the scene," says Eszterhas. "It is a testament to how patience, dedication, and deeply knowing your subject can produce a remarkable image."
Other amazing highlights include Daniel Dietrich's shot of polar bears wandering past a pile of whale bones in Alaska (above), Chiara Salvadori's psychedelic and alien snap of one of the world's largest salt pans, and Peter Mather's Photo Story winning narrative chronicling animal migrations in Alaska.
Take a look through the gallery to see more this year's stunning winners and finalists.
These images originally appeared on bioGraphic, an online magazine about science and sustainability and the official media sponsor for the California Academy of Sciences' BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition.
Love Curiosity, the bear.
Love the fascinating textures in the Namibia and Mozambique pics. Were the smaller stitched tracks (above and below the oryx tracks) from a scorpion, I wonder? I think wallpaper of dropped ant wings (sans ants) would be interesting to have on my dining room wall.
But my favorite was Duality, the spike mountain in Norway. At first, I thought the left-hand water was a mountain lake. But after studying it a bit, it appears that the textures misled me and it's the same ocean, not a lake. Kudos to all the photographers.